Driving Nails and Gouging Spears

There seems to be a trend in our Reformed circles to fight against sin by concentrating on just how sinful it really is. We concentrate on what a horrible thing we are doing every time we sin. To understand what I mean I want to use the following quote from a Reformed message forum.

“I think that if God gave up His only Son, then instead of driving the nails into His hands and feet doing what WE WANT to do instead of His will, that we should instead do our best to serve God according to HIS WILL.” – Anonymous

The idea here seems to be that if we make our selves feel bad about sinning we will do it less. While this may seem like a good strategy and may even appear pious on the surface it is 100% contrary to the gospel.

The gospel is about grace; God’s grace shown to us in Jesus Christ. God does not want us to live our lives motivated by guilt or a preoccupation with sin. He wants us to live our lives out of thankfulness and with a total focus on his abundant love and mercy. We need to direct our gaze to Jesus Christ and his finished work.

The idea expressed in the quotation above is that Christ suffering is ongoing and that by sinning we somehow add to Christ's suffering. The image tries to motivate us into sinning less by guilting us into lessening (or at least not worsening) Christ's suffering. The idea here is that we should avoid sinning because by doing so we continue (in some way) to drive the nails into Christ's hands and feet. This is a Roman Catholic idea and not at all Reformed (or more importantly Scriptural).

Please understand I am not picking on the Roman Catholic Church here. Nor am I saying that all Roman Catholics actually think this way about Christ’s sacrifice or that they live lives motivated by guilt. But in Roman Catholic theology the suffering of Christ is ongoing. This is symbolized by the Roman Catholic Mass in which the priest offers the true body and true blood of Christ over and over again each time. This is also why there is an ‘alter’ in Roman Catholic churches but not in Protestant churches.

Consider also how it is typically Catholic to see crucifixes with Jesus hanging on them while in Protestant circles we have crosses without Jesus hanging on it. This demonstrates the difference in that the Catholic church teaches the “ongoing suffering” of Christ while Reformed/Protestant theology teaches the “finished work of Christ”.

Our motivation for Christian living should never be guilt. It should be thankfulness for the salvation of God through Christ, once for all! Done! Finished! Finalized and sealed.

We do not continue to drive the nails into his hands and feet by our sins. Christ's death was offered "once, for all" and Jesus himself said "it is finished". This "finished work of Christ" is the cornerstone of our faith.

You cannot loose your salvation by falling into sin. And our sins don’t add to Christ's suffering either. So why not just go on sinning? Well when our theology causes us to ask that question we know we are on the right track. Why? You ask? Because that is the very question Paul was asked about his teaching. See Romans 6:1-2

“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” – Romans 6:1-2

Because our evil nature has been put to death with Christ and been buried with him. If we have died with Christ we no longer live in the sinful flesh. We have been made new with Him and are a new creation in Him so we need to live our new, reborn life in Christ Jesus.